


southern joy

by okayantigone



Series: the hollow crown-Riko Lives AU [2]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alcoholism - Implied, Drug Use, F/M, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, PTSD, Past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Riko lives AU, Trauma Recovery, Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-16
Updated: 2018-05-16
Packaged: 2019-05-07 20:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14678877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okayantigone/pseuds/okayantigone
Summary: “Kevin, why is Riko coming to our wedding?” she asks. Her voice is very even and quiet. Held together. The calm before the storm.Oh, Kevin thinks. This.





	southern joy

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is centered on the relationship between Kevin and Riko in a world where Riko lives post-series, and their respective roads to recovery. It's canon compliant in that Kevin marries Thea, and is happy with his life.

“Kevin,” Thea says in that voice he knows well, which indicates he’s in trouble for something and had better start coming up with excuses. The problem is, for the life of him, he can’t figure out what he’s done.

He turns to face her, resigning himself to an argument. That’s the problem, he thinks, with dating someone on equal footing. When there’s arguments, he’s expected to participate in them. If he tries to just roll over, and accept blame, it almost makes her madder than whatever it was he did to piss her off in the first place. He’s in love with that woman.

She’s holding a stack of letters – their wedding RSVPs. Maybe Andrew drew something rude on his, and that’s what’s got her in a mood – maybe he’s about to endure a rant on his uncouth friends who all lack discipline. Grateful as she is for the foxes’ influence on his drinking, and on his mental health, she’s not exactly fond of their …. well. Everything else.

“Kevin, why is Riko coming to our wedding?” she asks. Her voice is very even and quiet. Held together. The calm before the storm.

Oh, Kevin thinks. This.

He had hoped Riko’s brilliant tactician mind would supply him with a good enough reason to fucking decline the invitation.

“We were inseparable best friends for most of our lives, Thea,” he says in what he hopes is a reasonable voice. “It would have looked odd if he wasn’t invited. I didn’t…”

“You didn’t think he’d come,” Thea finishes. She seems to deflate at that.

“I can call him, if you want,” Kevin says. “Tell him not to.”

It’s odd, jarring even, that he and Riko are not on the same wavelength anymore. That they don’t read each other’s minds anymore. Sometimes, he still turns to his side and expects to find Riko there, like a missing limb.

It occurs to him, that Riko might have opened his mail, seen the invitation, and taken it at face value – as Kevin rolling out the welcome mat, letting Riko step back into his life. Back then, before, Kevin had always been honest like that. But he’d gone and learned at the Master’s feet with the rest of them, hadn’t he?

They haven’t spoken since that whole mess happened. Riko had stepped back from exy for a while, and by the time he’d come back, Kevin had moved on without him. Riko did not join Court.It was kindness, letting him publically state he’d declined the invitation, where an invitation had not been extended to begin with.

But he was all set up in Baltimore now, with the ghosts of the only father figure he’d ever known, doing Ichirou’s dirty work.

Kevin imagines him drinking alone every night, behind the six-inch bulletproof windows. It occurs to him, he doesn’t even know what Riko’s house looks like, but he’s sure he could search it on the Internet.

“No,” Thea says finally. “No, it’s fine. You don’t have to. He’s not your best man though, right?”

Kevin splutters at the absurdity of the suggestion. As if he’d ever ask Riko that. As if he’d ever take the charade that far. Once upon a time, he’d have reacted that way to the suggestion that Riko might not be his best man at his wedding. At the suggestion that he and Riko might not end up married to each other.

“Do you know who his plus one is?” Thea asks, grappling for a not too obvious subject change. Kevin’s left hand is reflexively curled into a fist at his side.

“No,” he says flatly. He wants a drink, badly, so instead he texts the foxes groupchat to warn them.

Riko is coming to the wedding. Behave.

Then he mutes the chat.

Lydia is looking especially nice in her long floor sweeping dress and fur coat, and as far as Kevin can tell, she isn’t visibly armed. She’s the kind of good ole southern belle sweetness that takes away the bite of having Riko on her arm, which Kevin assumes is precisely why he’s brought her along as a plus one. It’s very, very hard to be harsh in the face of Lydia Shetfield’s iron clad serenity.

She keeps Riko in rotation, steering him only around their Raven friends and aquintances, so he never has to exchange one word of conversation with anyone else. They take smoke breaks at the same time, and she keeps an eye on his drink. His hand is gripping her waist to hard under the folds of her fur throw, she thinks it might bruise, and his sweaty palm has definitely left an imprint on the silk of her dress.

“What the hell,” Jean asks quietly, “is he doing here?”

Kevin is in the room, getting ready to take his place at the front, and wait for Thea to walk down the aisle.

Jeremy is fretting, looking distinctly distressed, as he makes a faint noise, and then stops whatever he was about to say, ever the peacekeeper. Kevin couldn’t have chosen anyone else to be his best man if he wanted to. Andrew and Neil are smoking on the balcony and pretending like there isn’t about to be a fistfight.

“I didn’t think he’d come,” says Kevin lamely, and it sounds pathetic even to his own ears.

“You didn’t think he’d -?” Jean groans and drags an arm over his face.   
“Kevin. He broke your hand, not your brain.” Andrew stands in the entry to the room, looking impassive as ever. His flat expression offers no clues. “So you have no excuse to act stupid.”

  
Kevin raises a hand, about to point at Andrew accusingly, realizes he has nothing to say, and drops it, where it hangs limply by his side.

“It would have looked odd for Riko to not come to his wedding,” Neil says. He doesn’t seem happy about it, but he’s right. The media, after all, doesn’t have all the ugly details of the end to Kevin and Riko’s platonic marriage, all the way back when they were at university.

“Well, not much you can do about it now,” Jean says finally, resigned. “But if he comes near me, I’ll hurt him.”

“Yeah,” says Kevin. “Yeah, okay. Fair enough. Sure.”

“Let’s go get you married before Thea changes her mind,” Andrew offers, and it’s the most reasonable suggestion anyone’s had all day.

He does not spend the entirety of the reception studiously avoiding Riko. Honest. Which is why he does not jump out of his skin when he hears footsteps behind him in the fire escape, which should technically have been closed.

“I’m going to ask Lydia to marry me.”

He doesn’t want to turn around, but he wills his body to move. Riko looks as he always has, handsome in his dark tailored tux, the arrogant lines of his face seemingly carved out of ivory, his tattoo stark on his pale skin. He looks… better. Healthier than Kevin had ever seen him before.

There’s no hello, how are you, no apologies between them. He feels them slide into place smoothly, like all those years before. For a moment, nothing terrible has happened.

“She’ll be happy about that,” Kevin says.

“It’s just a natural step,” Riko says. “I’ve got business in France next month. I’m taking her with me.”

“You’ll propose in Paris? How romantic.”

Riko shrugs. “It’s what the people want.”

Kevin turns away from him, and leans forward on the railing. He might have been afraid of having Riko at his back, but as Andrew had established, he was also just stupid. If Riko wanted to hurt him, he would.

“Why did you come here?” Kevin asks, when Riko is on his second cigarette.

“Honestly? I thought no one else would be here and I’d get to smoke alone for a bit. Lydia’s doing coke in the bathroom.”

“No, I mean at my wedding,” Kevin clarifies. The hurt flashes briefly in Riko’s eyes, and disappears.

“I thought you wanted me to come,” he says carefully, neutrally. “Didn’t you?”

Kevin ponders over it for a moment. He hadn’t not wanted Riko to come, when he’d sent the invite. He hadn’t thought anything.

“It’s what the people want,” he says finally.

“But not you?”

Kevin marvels at how easy and familiar it is to look at Riko in darkness. Riko holds his hand up, to stop him speaking. “Nevermind. I don’t want to know.”

He offers Kevin a cigarette and lights it with his monogrammed lighter. Kevin imagines kissing him, like they used to.

“I came because I wanted to congratulate you in person,” Riko says, finally. “And to give you this. I couldn’t think of a better time to do it.”

He reaches in his jacket, and hands Kevin the thick envelope. Their fingers brush when Kevin takes it, but nothing happens. There’s no sparks, and no electricity.

He throws his cigarette over the railing, and opens the papers.

“It’s my will,” Riko clarifies.

Kevin’s blood runs cold. Something a lot like panic raises in his throat.

“Riko, are you - ? Is Ichirou about to - ?” He can’t quite form the words, but his mind paints all kinds of brutal scenarios. It’s not completely outside the realm of possibility. Ichirou had had Tetsuji killed, and Kevin had been there for that. But maybe he’d decided to cut his losses completely, and. –

“No, no,” Riko says quickly, shakes his head, and his hair falls into his eyes. “It’s not – it’s not like that. No. I mean, I don’t know. If he wanted to dispose of me, I don’t suppose I’d find out until it happened. But this is just – Well. Already I’ve lived longer than expected. And this is for you.”

Kevin skims over the pages. There’s a lot of zeroes going on. Some properties in places they’d once dreamed of going together. And –

“You’re giving me Castle Evermore?” his voice catches in his throat.

“It’s –“ Riko seems to struggle with words for a moment. He never was good at speaking unrehearsed. But never to Kevin. “It’s yours,” he says finally. “You deserve it. You’d do better with it. If I die. I’d know it will be taken care of. It’s your birthright.”

“Riko – “

“I was supposed to die.” Riko’s voice is lined with steel. “Rather, I wasn’t meant to be born at all. And Castle Evermore – it should have always been yours.”

“Would Ichirou let you – “

“He signed on as one of my witnesses,” Riko says quietly. It feels important, somehow. Kevin tucks the information away, together with the envelope.

“Thank you.”

They lapse into silence again. Kevin doesn’t know how to be around Riko anymore. It’s a startling realization. He isn’t sure how to handle it.

“I’m going to go back inside,” he says, finally. “I shouldn’t disappear from my own wedding.” he shuffles his feet.

“Right,” Riko says. He’s looking down at the side of the building, like he’s contemplating the height of a jump.

Kevin makes his way to the door carefully, slowly.

“It was always going to be you, you know,” Riko’s voice is quiet, and for a moment Kevin thinks he wasn’t mean to hear it at all. He keeps his left hand on the door handle. “For me, you were it,” his voice is hollow. Like it’s taking everything from him to admit it, like Kevin hadn’t known all along that Riko bought and carried the rings in his pocket since Goodridge.

“I know you know,” Riko says. “But I wanted to say it.”

Kevin wants to run back inside. He wants to lock himself in one of the rooms and scream. He wants a drink.

Instead he turns around. He studies the tense lines of Riko’s back. He wonders if the scars from the Master’s cane are covered by Irezumi tattoos now. Wonders if it’s the same thing as healing.

“I never asked,” When Riko turns around, he is once again charming and unhurt. “how you’re feeling?”

Kevin steels himself and nods before speaking, affirming the same thing that’s been echoing steadily in the last few years around his heart. “For the longest time,” he says carefully, “I thought I was broken. I thought you broke me.” He ignores Riko’s wince. “I don’t feel that way anymore.”

Riko nods. His face has softened into something fond and familiar. Something Kevin has been missing in the same way in which he’s missing a drink – a comfort he no longer needs, but his body remembers how to crave.

“Well,” says Riko quietly. “Now that you’re happy… I am.”

He seems… settled somehow. Resigned in a way Kevin has not seen on him. A tiredness seeps off him, and he looks whole again, for a moment.

“You going back inside?” Kevin asks. His hand is still, stupidly, on the door handle.

“I want to look at the sky a little longer,” Riko says. He doesn’t turn around again.

Kevin walks into the brightly lit reception room, and carefully shuts the door on Riko.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I would once again like to ask that you NOT begin your comments with endless platitudes about how much you hate Riko, but enjoyed this fic. Don't wanna hear it, thanks.


End file.
